Promiscuous inquiry was not advisable. So far, Miss Jane's disappearance was known to very few, and Hunter had advised caution. I wandered up the street and turned at random to the right; a few doors ahead a newish red brick building proclaimed itself the post-office, and gave the only sign of life in the neighborhood. It occurred to me that here inside was the one individual who, theoretically at least, in a small place always knows the idiosyncrasies of its people. The door was partly open, for the spring night was sultry. The postmaster proved to be a one-armed veteran of the Civil War, and he was sorting rapidly the contents of a mail-bag, emptied on the counter. "No delivery to-night," he said shortly. "Sunday delivery, two to three." "I suppose, then, I couldn't get a dollar's worth of stamps," I regretted. He looked up over his glasses. "We don't sell stamps on Sunday nights," he explained, more politely. "But if you're in a hurry for them--" "I am," I lied. And after he had got them out, counting them with a wrinkled finger, and tearing them off the sheet with the deliberation of age, I opened a general conversation. "I suppose you do a good bit of business here?" I asked. "It seems like a thriving place." "Not so bad; big mail here sometimes. First of the quarter, when bills are coming round, we have a rush, and holidays and Easter we've got to hire an express wagon." It was when I asked him about his empty sleeve, however, and he had told me that he lost his arm at Chancellorsville, that we became really friendly When he said he had been a corporal in General Maitland's command, my path was one of ease. "The Maitland ladies! I should say I do," he said warmly. "I've been fighting with Letitia Maitland as long as I can remember. That woman will scrap with the angel Gabriel at the resurrection, if he wakes her up before she's had her sleep out." "Miss Jane is not that sort, is she?" "Miss Jane? She's an angel--she is that. She could have been married a dozen times when she was a girl, but Letitia wouldn't have it. I was after her myself, forty-five years ago. This was the Maitland farm in those days, and my father kept a country store down where the railroad station is now." "I suppose from that the Maitland ladies are wealthy." "Wealthy! They don't know what they're worth--not that it matters a mite to Jane Maitland. She hasn't called her soul her own for so long that I guess the good Lord won't hold her responsible for it." All of which was entertaining, but it was much like an old-fashioned see-saw; it kept going, but it didn't make much progress. But now at last we took a step ahead. "It's a shameful thing," the old man pursued, "that a woman as old as Jane should have to get her letters surreptitiously. For more than a year now she's been coming here twice a week for her mail, and I've been keeping it for her. Rain or shine, Mondays and Thursdays, she's been coming, and a sight of letters she's been getting, too."